Title: Overlord Vol. 14
Author: Kugane Maruyama (Story), Hugin Miyama (Art)
Publisher: Yen Press
Language: English
Format: Paperback
Pages: 178
Genre: Shounen, Battle
Publication Date: January 18, 2022
The Story
Volume fourteen of Overlord takes us to a village where we see a young couple in oblivious love… well… maybe not oblivious but Nfirea (Nfi for short) is working on a potion for Ainz. The potion has a breakthrough and turns an untypical color of purple but its healing capabilities are unparalleled. In the same village is a girl named Enri in which Nfi has a crush on. The village is also aided by goblins who revere her as their master.
One day, while on patrol, there is talk of something going on in the forest. There, they discover a young goblin child being chased by a monster. Through his tale, we learn of The Giant of the East and The Serpent of the West and how they are attempting to clash; however, they are held at bay out of fear for the southern region as well as some ruins being built in the center of the forest where the undead are gathering (I wonder who did that? Hmm…)
When Lupisregina reports back to Ainz and fails to report about the power struggle of the forest, he languishes her for her failure but then sees this as an opportunity to investigate. He pays The Giant of the East a visit and discovers that The Serpent of the West is with him. Due to Ainz’s long name, The Giant, Gu, feels that he is a coward and negotiations break down. He engages Ainz in combat which proves to be a mistake. The volume ends with Ainz applying the pressure to Gu who looks ready to submit.
Characters
We have several new characters in this volume!
Starting with Nfi, he’s just a simple boy who has a crush on Enri but is too scared to say anything to her. It was funny when the goblins took them into the forest to collect herbs and ended up giving him some visual signals to let him know when would be a good time to make a move on her! He seems really timid about most things but once you start talking to him about alchemy, he gets rather excited and shows off his knowledge.
Enri, on the other hand, is just as innocent. She clearly likes Nfi but won’t really make it known verbally. She does make it known by staring at him often to which Nfi wonders if there’s something wrong. Whenever he questions her, she gets pretty embarrassed about it! It’s a really cute relationship that’s forming between them!
Lupisregina makes an appearance here and she’s just about as sassy as can be. I really love her personality but her slip-up with not reporting the situation with the forest to Ainz shows that she’s a bit overconfident in her duties. The fact that she didn’t feel it was an important detail is a crucial error for anyone representing to the Tomb of Nazarick! It kind of reminded me of the lizard man arc when Ainz entrusted Cocytus with overseeing the operation; however, their personalities are much varied from each other.
There are too many goblins to really name but they do seem a bit genuine in their willingness to aid Enri and Nfi with their village. At first, they seemed a bit suspicious but when Enri makes a trip to the capital, it suddenly becomes clear as to why they are so obedient! The goblin child, Arg, is suspected of being something else due to his higher-than-average intelligence but there’s no telling right now how that is going to play out in the future.
Final Thoughts
It’s good to read another volume of Overlord again! It’s been a bit since the last volume but this new arc has been a little interesting, albeit, a little stale at the same time. While we are getting some new characters along with some continuity from some of the earlier volumes, the premise that we have seen with other Ainz schemes is the same… manipulation from the shadows for his own personal gain. I know that’s been his M.O. since the beginning but after 14 volumes, it would be nice to change it up a bit.
Then again, after Lupisregina questioned him about a certain potion that he gave away, it shows that Ainz isn’t THAT good of a tactician so, who knows? Maybe he’s just sticking to what he knows works?
One other interesting tidbit surrounds the potion that Nfi created. Ainz spoke of Yggrassil and how some items from the game may have been lost. I think this is more significant than the manga is leading us to believe. The whole premise of this series is that a gamer got trapped inside of the game but instead of fighting to get out, he’s attempting to take over the world. The key takeaway here is that this is supposed to be the game world. We saw it in the very first volume that the servers went offline for everyone but Ainz. He’s supposed to be still carrying on in the very same game world and yet… here… he’s speaking of items from the game not existing anymore or the in-game technology to produce them has gone missing. This raises a huge question about either the state of the game or the state of the world he was transported to.
It could be that since the servers went offline, there could be a disconnection between the game and the databases that produced the items but if that were the case, then what about all of the NPCs and monsters and other items? Wouldn’t there be a disconnect there as well? That one little discussion over the creation of a potion really raises a big mystery… either that or it’s a plot hole. Only time will tell, I suppose.
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**This item was provided for review by Yen Press
